Osage orange bottle opener for the beer swap

This year’s beer swap was a quick one to fill in between other swaps. It was agreed to concentrate on the beer first and throw together an item to go along with it. Since I had made one of these for last year’s swap, I thought that would be something that I could finish in the time allotted.

The wood I chose was Maclura pomifera aka osage orange aka bois d’arc (bow wood), hedge apple, horse apple, etc. It is a very hard wood but surprisingly, it works fairly well. This wood came from a tree on our previous property which had been killed by our mule who used it as a scratching post, and by doing so, had rubbed all the bark off about rump high. I saved a length of trunk which I split in two, treated for bugs and saved for 7-8 years.

I started with this:

The only bug tracks found were in the sap portion (yay Kenny!). The rest had that beautiful color.

I drilled two holes in the stainless opener blank and whittled down a sliver of walnut which I drove through one of the holes to create a long peg which was cut into very short pegs. The scales were aligned up with the blank and short counter bores drilled into them for added strength while gluing (pics 4&5).

I glued them up (pic 6 (yes, I made 3 in case I messed up 1, or 2)) using G-flex which offered a long working time for alignment issues.

I bought some cheap sanding drums for my drill press which I used for most of the shaping, including the finger grooves.

To round over the sides of the scales, I first started with a belt sander held in my vise, but there were issues with the sander and it quickly broke 2 new belts. So what to do? Fellow LJ Putty to the rescue once again! He had a disc sanding attachment for his lathe which made quick work of that part. Thanks again Putty!!

Finish was spray-on poly, 3 coats.The beers:

Thanks for looking and THANKS KENNY for a great swap!

-- "Duck and Bob would be out doin some farming with funny hats on." chrisstef

Thanks Dave and Mike. The osage is beautiful and the pictures don’t show the real color.The slowest part was glue drying and finish drying :). Oh, and driving to Putty’s house. The roads have all changed in the last year and I got temporarily lost, lol.

-- "Duck and Bob would be out doin some farming with funny hats on." chrisstef

Very nice work Duck. Looks like I need to do more scrounging around in my trees to see if there are any treasures like you found. Kenny did send me a piece of osage orange so now I need to find a good project like this to show it off.

-- Earl "I'm a pessamist - generally that increases the chance that things will turn out better than expected"

Great work Duck. Sure am glad you decided to jump in again! That Osage Orange is some pretty stuff! And the piece I sent Earl was from the piece you sent me :-) I didn’t have any issues with bug tracks in the heartwood either. I think it’s too hard for them to chew into! I still haven’t got a mallet made from it yet but it’ll show up eventually…

Glad to see Whistle Post is still doing their thing too :-)) I’m sure Tom will enjoy those (if he hasn’t already…)